An examination of the advantages of mentoring within the nursing profession.
The mentoring process bridges the gap between formal, theoretical knowledge and practical, real life experience. This paper explains how the mentoring relationship helps the learner apply knowledge by creating emotional connectedness to his or her career and by having a person who is as committed to his or her success as the learner. It states that, while knowledge is gained in the classroom, the nurse must be able to apply the knowledge in a high-pressure, fast-moving environment, in which the nurse?s decisions can make a significant positive or negative impact on the patient?s well-being. By establishing a mentoring relationship, the experience of successful nurses can be transferred to the novice, thus enriching the entire profession.
“The concept of career mentoring has been quietly making its way back into the professional marketplace as a means to ensure the success of up and coming executives, and professionals in positions which require a high degree of skill training, and emotional adjustments to their careers. Mentoring has long been knows for it’s positive benefits, but in the competitive based, and highly individualized American marketplace, mentoring had been slowly abandoned as a means of producing qualified candidates. The American culture is based on competition as the means of attaining success. As a result of our colure, the natural selection process, of possibly the law of attrition has been used to cultivate trained professionals. Throughout the last half of the 20th century, the terms dog eat dog and survival of the fittest have described the nature of the American career path in many, if not most professional fields.”